Apple appears to be far more determined in the realm of artificial intelligence (AI) compared to its previous ventures into car manufacturing.
Sources report that Apple has acquired the Canadian AI startup DarwinAI, with the intention to hasten its strides in the generative AI sector and potentially equip the company with new weapons for future technological breakthroughs.
In addition, Dozens of DarwinAI employees, including co-founder Alexander Wong, have already joined Apple's AI department, with Wong appointed as the team's director.
DarwinAI is a company that has developed AI technology capable of conducting visual inspections of components during the manufacturing process. Their technology has been utilized in a variety of sectors.
It had raised more than $15 million by 2022, according to Communitech, a community for tech startups in Canada. The startup received funding from investors such as Honeywell Ventures and Inovia Capital and collaborated with companies like Lockheed Martin and Intel.
One of its core advantages is designing AI systems to be more compact and faster, an attribute that is significantly beneficial to Apple as it seeks to operate AI locally on its devices rather than relying solely on cloud computing.
Therefore, Apple's acquisition of DarwinAI resulted in a brief surge in the tech company's stock price, elevating the shares by over 1% to $173. This is particularly noteworthy considering the approximately 10% drop in Apple's stock since January of this year due to less-than-expected advancements in AI, among other reasons. This drop led to Apple relocating the world's highest market value title to Microsoft.
Apple CEO Tim Cook has previously promised to bring forward innovations and breakthroughs in the AI sector this year. The acquisition of DarwinAI represents a solid effort from Apple to deliver on Cook's commitment by making a significant push into the AI realm.
However, despite acquiring more AI companies over the past decade than most of its competitors, Apple had surprisingly lagged behind in the development of generative AI. However, seeing more and more companies riding the wave of AI to show significant gains in market value, Apple has begun integrating generative AI into its business processes to provide support for tasks like addressing customer service requests.
Currently, Apple is incorporating features reliant on generative AI into its iOS 18 software and plans to apply the technology to tasks like automatically generating presentations and text. In addition, rumors suggest Apple is developing a new version of the Xcode programming software that will use AI to aid developers with code writing.
Notably, earlier this month, Apple also launched the latest MacBook Air, highlighting its capabilities to function with AI. Analysts have noted that this is Apple's first time placing direct emphasis on a product's AI performance.